Hammami in a video posted to YouTube in March 2012 in which he calls for help from the world’s Muslims due to being threatened by Al-Shabab in his dispute with Ahmed “Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr” Godane.

Hammami with Mukhtar “Abu Mansur al-Amriki” Robow at a May 2011 conferenceheld in Lower Shabelle by Al-Shabab to eulogize Usama bin Laden.

Hammami with Mukhtar “Abu Mansur al-Amriki” Robow at a May 2011 conference held in Lower Shabelle by Al-Shabab to eulogize Usama bin Laden.

Hammami with Mukhtar “Abu Mansur al-Amriki” Robow at a May 2011 conference held in Lower Shabelle by Al-Shabab to eulogize Usama bin Laden.

Hammami speaking a May 2011 conference held in Lower Shabelle by Al-Shabab to eulogize Usama bin Laden. Behind him are a number of senior Al-Shabab administration and regional leaders including preacher Fu’ad Muhammad Khalaf “Shongole” (second from right) and Muhammad Abu ‘Abdullah (far right), the governor of Lower Shabelle.

Hammami in the insurgent video Ambush at Bardale produced by Al-Shabab’s media department and released in March 2009 in which Hammami and Mukhtar Robow are shown planning and carrying out an ambush on Ethiopian forces in the Bay region of western Somalia.

Hammami at a 2010 Al-Shabab event for children of the movement’s martyrs with Al-Shabab spokesman ‘Ali Rage (left).

Hammami at a 2010 Al-Shabab event for children of the movement’s martyrs.

Omar Hammami (right) with Mukhtar “Abu Mansur” Robow, a dissident Al-Shabab leader and member of the Rahanweyn clan group with which Hammami affiliated himself with on his year and a half in hiding from Al-Shabab.

American jihadi Omar “Abu Mansur al-Amriki” Hammami has reportedly been killed in an ambush in southern Somalia carried out by Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen (Movement of the Mujahideen-Youth). Hiding in the forests of the Bay and Bakool region of Somalia, Hammami fell out publicly with Al-Shabab in March 2012 over issues of “strategy and shari’a [Islamic law.]” Hammami’s killing comes in the midst of growing internal strife within Al-Shabab related to the leadership (and criticism of it) of the movement’s amir, Ahmed “Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr” Godane. In late June, reports surfaced that Godane had ordered the assassinations of two senior leaders of Al-Shabab who were also critical of his leadership, Ibrahim al-Afghani and preacher Mu’allim Burhan.

In his last interview, with Voice of America’s Somali language service, Hammami alleged that Godane had abandoned the “principles of our religion [Islam],” which represents a form of takfir or declaration of an individual who claims to be Muslim as a non-Muslim. In his strategic writings and audio recordings, produced both under his nom de guerre “Abu Mansur al-Amriki” and his pen name “Abu Jihad al-Shami,” Hammami argued for a strategy wedded to “pure” Islam (as defined by him), marking a puritanical streak which, as can be seen in his dispute with Al-Shabab, transcended loyalty to any particular militant group.

The Global Jihad (al-Jihad al-‘Alami) is currently eulogizing Hammami and a British militant who was also killed with a banner at the top of its main page. The banner (below) declares that “the shaykh” Hammami was martyred, using the term istishhad, which can carry a meaning of seeking out martyrdom. The banner includes a quotation from part of verse 156 of Sura al-Baqara in the Qur’an:

Inna li-lahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un (Verily we are from God and to Him we return).

In the introduction to her edited volume Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, Klejda Mulaj notes that, while political science scholarship has extensively examined non-state actors (most notably those whose activities are primarily economic), violent non-state actors (VNSAs) “have only recently received sustained interest amongst academic and policy circles.” The study of VNSAs is thus a young and developing academic field, and scholars examining VNSAs will experience both the joys and also the pitfalls of working on a relatively new topic. The theoretical literature is highly uneven, with some extraordinarily well developed concepts mixed with a battery of assumptions that the field may no longer adhere to in four or five years.

This semester I’m teaching a course on violent non-state actors for Georgetown University’s security studies program, the first such class that the program has offered (although it has offered courses examining terrorism and counterterrorism for many years). A number of colleagues have expressed interest in seeing my syllabus, or having me provide a reading list. Thus, to assist other scholars with an interest in VNSAs, I’ve compiled the following reading list, largely based on my course syllabus. The inclusion of a particular work does not constitute an endorsement (which should be evident to those who remember my reaction to Pape and Feldman’s Cutting the Fuse), but it means that it’s part of the relevant discussion that scholars should be having. [Note: This list was updated on July 9, 2014, following the completion of a new course syllabus.]